A first attempt at a categorization (I)
As I’ve laid out in my first post, the purpose of this blog is to explore corporate blogging as a new form of business communication. One distinction that the most casual observer will notice right away is that corporate blogs fall into certain categories regarding who writes them, what their purpose is and whom they target. I want to make a first attempt at developing such a categorization here and I also want delineate the genre as such, i.e. what ‘counts’ as a corporate blog in my research and what doesn’t. Let’s start with the latter.
Per my working definition, corporare blogs are: Blogs that are written and maintained by corporate affiliates, speaking on behalf of their employer, that exist for the purpose of communicating with others in a way that is meant to benefit the company or industry. Blogs which are concerned purely with consulting, public relations or blog-related services for other businesses are not included.
The important exclusion here is of those who have made blogging a business for themselves, be it through consulting, blog hosting or as a personal business model. It is helpful to make this distinction for several reasons. Firstly, consulting and PR-related blogs have completely different stakes in blogging than do companies from other industries. They are concerned almost exclusively with promoting the practice of blogging (after all, that’s their business model) and with commenting on the performances of the ‘real’ actors and how blogging helps (or hurts) their business. Secondly, professional bloggers - usually journalists, academics, activists, experts in a professional context such as business or technology etc - have an interest primarily in keeping their readers informed and entertained. As there is no aspect of business outside of blogging that immediatly concerns them, their stakes are also different.
In a second step, I have also chosen to focus on larger companies in favor of start-ups and companies in general in favor of individuals, though there are some exceptions to this rule. The selection for my list is fuzzy in some regards, however, I believe that it is consistent enough to prove functional with a large enough sample. Obviously few blogs - corporate or otherwise - are created with the need to conform with neat genre categories in mind.
Taking all this into account, I have so far found four different types of corporate blogs which all conform to my definition, but differ considerably in regards to authorship, purpose and audience.
A. Expert Blogs
B. Executive Blogs
C. Product Blogs
D. Image Blogs
Before I look at the individual categories, note these four types conflate the question of Who writes them? with What are they for? Executive blogs obviously have something to do with a company’s image and expert blogs will often be concerned with products, but it is still possible to single out PR (image) and marketing (products) professionals here, because, unlike executives and subject-matter experts, their job is not to place themselves or their expertise at the center of attention in the blog, but instead either the company as such or its products. They remain largely invisible in the communication process, something that is underscored by the fact that many product blogs do not provide authorship information.
A. Expert Blogs
written by: subject-matter experts, such as software developers, engineers, scientists, finance and legal experts etc
target audience: other experts at the same company or in the same industry, executives, existing customers
purposes: a) to inform, b) to seek information and advice from others and, c) as as a mnenomic instrument for the author
B. Executive Blogs
written by: company leaders and management
target audience: business partners, potential and existing customers, shareholders, company employees, [press, competitors, general public]
purposes: very diverse; include a) to explain and clarify management strategy, b) to build trust in the company, c) to promote the company’s products, d) to criticize competitors and their products and e) to react to criticism from competitors, customers, the press etc.
C. Product Blogs
written (or edited) by: marketing specialists
target audience: potential and existing customers
purpose: a) to promote a product directly, b) to generate a discussion centered on the product, c) to address issues not identical with but closely related to the company’s products
D. Image Blogs
written (or edited) by: public-relations specialists
target audience: potential and existing customers, general public
purpose: a) to create a positive public perception of the company, b) to actively shape the public discussion of the company and its products and c) to address specific criticism from customers
In my next post, I will take a closer look at the individual categories, provide examples of typical members and outline the model’s limits.
